Steampunk printing

Some of you might already know that I’m absolutely in love with my Makerbot 3D printer. It has opened up a whole new world of ways to design and build stuff. My current project has a Steampunk theme and I needed some parts for decoration. So I fired up Sketchup and designed some parts that I think looks cool and printed them out. Printed them out and added some paint and now it feels like stuff from the Steampunk universe.I’m especially happy with the handles.

More on the main project later. I just wanted to inspire and hopefully tempt some of you to invest in a 3D printer, It’s worth every cent.

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Some years ago I read about the Reprap project and I even found a guy that embeded some electronic parts in the object he was making and had a second extruder that was melting thin solid solder to make electrical connections between the resistors, transistors, etc. At that point I thought how cool it would be to have a 3d printed robot... A Reprap combined with a pick and place arm... Create the project on the computer, have it send out commands to print the chassis half way, then place the motors (with the robot arm), build the holders around them, place the battery, build some more, then start building the electronics deck, placing the microcontroller, resistors, LEDs, sensors, etc. (SMD probably...) and use the second extruder to make electrical connections between them. Need to isolate them? Print a layer of plastic and do the second layer for the circuit... Think about the possibilities... Not only for robotics, but other arty crafts that can be 3D printed with embeded electronics circuits...

Ok, so in my project I find that I need some sort of funnel to direct the light from my http://www.watterott.com/de/BlinkM-miniM-I2C-RGB-LED onto a surface for 40x16mm. Again a trip into sketch up and 20min later the funnel is here.I can’t say this enough, -3D printing is awesome !

I totally agree. Like some low-cost casting.The ABS (the same plastic as LEGO’s are made of) can be sanded down, drilled, taped or anything else you can do with plastic. You can even get a high gloss shine with the use of Acetone.

I actually got mine for my 50th birthday but my brother probably did a lot of research before he ordered it (being a geek himself) So this is the one I got http://store.makerbot.com/makerbot-thing-o-matic.htmlIt’s a great printer and the fun of assembling it is almost worth the price itself. Everything went together very good. I had one issue with the cable going to the heater as it had several breaks in it but that was easily fixed as I have plenty of wire.

The kit comes with 3 different building platforms. Go for the regular heated platform and not the automated platform if you’re not starting a production line. I built the automated platform first but changed it to the heated platform later on.

It would be great if there were more people with printers here at LMR. We might get an new section with shared models?